Sackton: NMFS, DOC to blame for 38% drop in New England haddock revenue since 2011,- (And their ecoevangelical ENGO’s masters are too!)

We have been struck by the success of the recent Canadian winter haddock season. In January, in just a few ports in Nova Scotia, Canadian boats landed more than 2,000 metric tons of haddock (nearly 4.5 million pounds). The newspapers were filled with stories of overloaded harbors, full processing plants, and higher revenue based on great market prices.,,,Meanwhile, the fisheries disaster in New England keeps unfolding. According to a recent letter from the chair of the New England council to the head of the Department of Commerce (DOC), 2013 groundfish landings in New England will be around 43.4 million pounds, with revenue of only $55.8 million. This represents a 38% reduction in revenue since 2011. No wonder New England fishing businesses outside of the scallop industry are facing extinction. Read [email protected] 14:24

4 Responses to Sackton: NMFS, DOC to blame for 38% drop in New England haddock revenue since 2011,- (And their ecoevangelical ENGO’s masters are too!)

Once again the Pew e-mail robots prevent our fisheries managers from making the common sense decisions that will ensure success.
The dis-information and outright lies published by these people have prevented good governance and cost US taxpayers enormous amounts of lost revenue. The 1 percent that Pew represents are ensuring that democracy doesn’t work for the rest.

I have taken John Saxton to task several times over the years regarding some of his previous articles where I thought that they were ill advised. Today I feel I need to give credit where credit is due, & where John was able to get right to the heart of the matter, & (even more importantly) at the same time offer up a solution that is perfectly feasible, critical & doable.

At the same time that Regional Administrator John Bullard is out there telling the whole world (at least those who will listen) that we can’t catch our quota, ergo there are no fish; Canadian fishermen are actually catching & landing literally tons of haddock.

He clearly points out that the reduced groundfish landings resulted in a 38% “loss” of revenue since 2011! Even a robust fishery with good annual landings’ revenue would likely find this amount of loss devastating, but the New England groundfish industry has had to weather this storm for years now!

What ever happened to the understanding that when the stocks returned, that we as a partner of the Transboundary Management Guidance Committee (TMGC) would share in that wealth. The real travesty of this failure is not due to any fault of the Canadians, but to those who would & “DO” prevent us from accessing what we have already paid so dearly for, “our own Environmental Industry & Fishery NonManagement”.

Another key issue that John has laid bare, is the cost of observers which apparently are twice what the Canadians are asked to pay. The US fleet is not only required to pay for the observer, but they have to contribute to the NMFS/NOAA kitty as well. How many times is NMFS going to find ways to squeeze the life blood from the fisheries?
Two points that John made that I don’t agree with though are; I don’t believe that we should allocate any of the disaster money to NMFS/NOAA to ante-up for observers. That’s nothing short of blackmail; just their way of saying, well now you have the money…; well at least what’s left after they already have taken their administrative fees & costs.

The second point has to do with John’s statement about the 20,000 environmental letters opposing the reopening of the Closed Areas. Those are not letters! There are only environmentally generated “Spam emails” & should be defined as such, & given the due credit & recognition spam deserves.

The draconian cuts have choked off much of the activity, and the cut’s were based on computer models that lack the predator/ prey activity, along with the missing climate data that is now being considered as the cause for a stock, cod, which was scheduled to be rebuilt by 2014, this year!

It’s hard to forget the confusion when, all of a sudden this was not to be.

I recall NOAA/NMFS or whatever they call themselves these day, saying something was going on out there, but they knew not what!

We focused on the Bigelow, the computer models, the data, and there were lots of meetings.

A lot of weaknesses in the catch share/quota, as far as the now abandoned effort controls, and the ability for large boats to fish in areas that traditionally were fished with small boats because of quota sales was a concern as far as localized depletion of stock’s, but they never really pin pointed the cause , only to say they underestimated recruitment, and that was the cause.

I recall Peter Mullen commenting at a meeting asking if herring were included in the modeling, and him saying he was shocked that they weren’t

There is more, but we all pretty much know the story, so I’m switching gears, and will bring up the issue that is the reason for all of this, and its water temperature.

I recall listening to the Fisheries Broadcast last year, and a good ole boy saying on the show, he had never seen so many cod in almost fifty years of fishing in Newfoundland. Don’t forget the collapse of the fishery, and those that said it hadn’t recovered.

Jeffrey A. Hutchings, a Canadian-born fisheries scientist, at, where else? Dalhousie University, comes to mind, because I listened to him say on the Broadcast that it hadn’t recovered, even though his statement was surely based on the “best available” science, and the fact he’s cut from the same cloth as some other noteworthy, controversial scientists.

I have been watching this discussion take place, have been reading the articles, and realized there is a mass migration that has been occurring spiking in the last three years or so, and reading other articles that say the migration to the poles is a continuance of a forty year trend.

As you guy’s know, I listen to a lot of council meetings not just the NEFMC meetings. I try to learn about these issues.

I had the pleasure of attending the MAFMC meeting last week and listened to a fascinating presentation on climate effects on fisheries.

It confirmed everything I’ve described above, and then some.

I believe there was one person in attendance that was awestruck ad t was the fellow that stated no one was guaranteed a job for life, heh, and I’ll add, no one is guaranteed that their cod quota won’t swim away, because it seems, it has under the current climate conditions in the North West Atlantic!

Listening to this, and John Bullard’s comments following the presentation, when someone asked whether we were hurting ourselves under this situation, and the response was, “Smoke ’em if you got ’em”, meaning we possibly are hurting ourselves with the notion of not catching them as they leave for Canada, I had to wonder if any of the voices that we heard when they slashed the cod quota were screaming in John Bullard’s head.

If the conditions are not conducive to recover cod are beyond our control, it makes no sense to use it as a tool to keep these guys from fishing on healthy stocks that soon could be migrating north.

This unforeseen situation that has groundfish leaving, and Black Sea Bass entering the Gulf of Maine, along with other species like squid, Mahi Mahi and other exotic fish also now affects ownership rights.

Will the Canadians pay for New England owned quota? and since we know they won’t, will the losers of that quota be forced into buying quota to fish someone else’s Black Sea Bass? or will those quota owners just migrate with the fish they own, and cut the New England fleet out completely?

Don’t say it can’t happen, because we’ve been watching things that just can’t happen, happen!

When the tapes from the MAFMC meeting are available, I’ll post them. BH

NILS STOLPE: The New England groundfish debacle (Part IV): Is cutting back harvest really the answer?

While it’s a fact that’s hardly ever acknowledged, the assumption in fisheries management is that if the population of a stock of fish isn’t at some arbitrary level, it’s because of too much fishing. Hence the term “overfished.” Hence the mandated knee jerk reaction of the fisheries managers to not enough fish; cut back on fishing. What of other factors? They don’t count. It’s all about fishing, because fishing is all that the managers can control; it’s their Maslow’s Hammer. When it comes to the oceans it seems as if it’s about all that the industry connected mega-foundations that support the anti-fishing ENGOs with hundreds of millions of dollars a year in “donations” are interested in controlling. Read the article here

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